Categories
Miscellany

Chapel Hill looking at 2-cent hike

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Noting that the town’s debt service increases are not keeping pace with revenue growth, Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil is asking the Town Council to shift $3.8 million from the town’s reserve fund and raise the tax rate by 2 cents in order to make ends meet.

The changes would raise the town’s tax rate to 54.1 cents per $100 valuation.

Categories
Miscellany

Chatham, Orange study regional plans to deal with transportation issues

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

With Chapel Hill North bearing down on Orange County and Chatham County’s population set to explode, transportation was a top concern for Orange and Chatham county commissioners at a joint meeting Tuesday night.

Orange County Planning Director Craig Benedict cautioned that because many Chatham County residents are employed in Chapel Hill, as Chatham County’s population grows so does the need for public transportation between the two counties.

Categories
Miscellany

News briefs: 5/10/07

East Student in critical condition
East Chapel Hill High School senior Conrad Zaborowski is in critical condition at UNC Hospitals after a single-car crash on Seawell School Road around 1 a.m. Saturday.

Police believe Zaborowski was driving more than 100 miles per hour south on Seawell School Road when he ran off the road and lost control of his vehicle. Zaborowski was thrown from the 2001 Audi A4 before it caught fire.

The 18-year-old is in a coma and has sustained severe injuries.

Categories
Miscellany

Another blackberry winter

Close inspection will reveal the green ‘baby’ blackberry fruit in the center of the white petals. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

It’s early May and the blackberry “brambles” are brightening field edges and roadsides with masses of pure white flowers. When these same blackberry flower-filled days and nights are really, really chilly, the old timers refer to it as “Blackberry Winter.” That description certainly is appropriate for this early May in and around Carrboro. Blackberry flowers (Rubus argutus is the most common of about a dozen edible blackberry species in our state) are particularly beautiful this year, perhaps due to the cool temperatures prolonging their freshness. Or perhaps my pronouncement is the result of over-stimulation by the excessive masses of flowering brambles beginning to overtake more than the edges of my wild garden. Well, very few would describe my yard a “garden” since nature is far more in charge than am I.

Categories
Miscellany

School board passes elementary redistricting plan

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

After more than a month of deliberation and revisions, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education last week voted 5-1 to approve a redistricting plan that will move nearly 500 students to a new elementary school when it opens in the fall of 2008.

Immediately following the decision, the board also voted 5-1 to create a subcommittee to review the redistricting process, citing difficulties with this year’s and past redistricting efforts.

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Miscellany

School briefs: 5/10/07

Local teacher named cultural ambassador
Helen Crompton, a British international-exchange teacher at Carrboro Elementary School, has been named outstanding cultural ambassador by the Visiting International Faculty (VIF) Program.

VIF is the largest international-exchange program linking teachers and U.S. schools, sponsoring about 900 international teachers in the state. Crompton teaches fifth grade at Carrboro Elementary, where she is known for planning international and cultural activities for her class and for the entire school.

Categories
Miscellany

For the Record

Be safe
This time of year, you hear the words teenager, excessive speed and alcohol mixed together in news stories all too much.

School is almost out. It’s party season, and all the lectures, all the peer support and every effort to ask, plead and demand that our sons and daughters make responsible choices are up against some pretty tough odds.

Categories
Miscellany

Grading N.C.’s incentive policies

By William Schweke

Twenty years ago, North Carolina was not a player in the controversial national competition between states sometimes referred to as “the corporate incentives game.” Today, it’s a “leader” (at least in the eyes of the site location profession) and has set new precedents for how much a job is “worth” with its recent and costly winning bids for Dell and Google. These “successes” have, in turn, raised the expectations of relocating businesses everywhere for even more lucrative deals and pressured other states to match North Carolina’s largess for the privilege of providing a home for a new plant, distribution center or headquarters.

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Miscellany

Stop chasing rabbits

By Al McSurely

A favorite last-ditch tactic of the Big Lie is to send out high-ranking officials as rabbits to deflect attention and indictments from their sponsors. Our high-paid, blow-dried TV talking heads are suckers for this ploy. Chattering away, like they did when Cheney/Bush lied us into Iraq, the millionaire talking heads appear clueless to the origins of the expression “fall guy.” Even after Scooter Libby’s lawyer spelled it out to the jury. And the jury foreperson spelled it out to the media:

“Libby is a fall guy.” He is falling on his sword for his sponsor, Dick Cheney. The talking heads repeated the clue, but did no follow up. Two months later, the White House sent out another rabbit and the talking heads chased him with the same gullibility. Alberto Gonzalez, facing criminal indictment for conspiracy to institutionalize racist voter suppression in Arkansas and other key swing states, could remember inconsequential interactions over the years, but his mind went blank about all but one of his interactions with his Texas sponsors, George Bush and Karl Rove.

Categories
Arts & Music

Artwalk is Friday

Tiles from Ali Sobel-Read at N.C. Crafts Gallery

The 2nd Friday ArtWalk is this week, and there’s a special push on to walk Carrboro — and not just on Friday.

The ArtWalk is a traditional time to take to the streets and view displays through the downtowns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Now a group of Carrboro residents wants to take it to a higher level.

Categories
Miscellany

Obituary – John W. Vadney

John W. Vadney, 84, of Mebane, died Monday at Duke University medical Center.

A native of Albany, NY, he was a member of St. Thomas More Catholic Church and retired as a telephone repairman.

A mass will be conducted at 11:00 Thursday at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. Burial will follow in the Union Grove United Methodist Church Cemetery.